Medical marijuana dispensary review: Greenfields in Denver

There are no green fields around Greenfields. Just lots of black-topped parking lot and the wide stretch of Mississippi Avenue out front. There's a small shrub-like tree on the curb, but that's about it. As if to make up for that, however, the owners have painted their odd little building (formerly an awesome Mexican meat market and bakery that moved next door) entirely green.

The two women working behind the scenes the day I was in were blasting pop music through the speakers in the waiting room. (Thanks, ladies: I've still got that damn Umbrella-ella-ella song in my head.) I stood around for a second wondering if anyone was behind the receptionist window that had been tinted to nearly one-way levels of darkness. Eventually, though, a tiny voice from behind the glass asked me if I was a medical patient and if I had all of my information with me.

I am and I did, so I handed it over and was buzzed through to the empty and echoing confines of the shop itself. Before, the place felt crowded with meat stands and tables and food on display. Now it seems huge -- and green, as the same neon shade outside is repeated inside. A bud bar runs the length of the shop from front to back, with edibles and vape pens all the way down on the left and herb kept in jars on the other end. One corner has been set up as a patient lounge, and for the most part, staffers have erased signs of the former business, minus the huge stainless freezer door in the middle of one wall.

A manager I spoke with afterward told me the shop is currently going through a remodel. As a result, it will probably look different -- and less empty -- in the coming weeks. She was really friendly during our conversation, and frankly, so was the staff at the center itself. I've never been called "mister" at a dispensary before, and both women seemed genuinely happy to deal with my nerdy questions about the herb, the strains on the shelf and how much everything cost, answering it all with a smile.

And, according to the ladies, everything is cheap. The shop has three levels of herb, with yellow-labeled jars on the top shelf, pink jars in the middle and green representing the lowest quality. That price break only matters at the ounce level, though. Quarter ounces of all strains sell for $50 with tax included (eighths are $25), and ounces were selling for $145, $150 and $155, depending on their quality.

For the most part, the herb was worth that price. Buds like the LA Confidiential, the Flo and the Chem X Flo were all grown okay, but none put off a very strong, strain-distinct smell, and a few had a musty, hay-like thing going on. But they were all plump and ripe, so the shop is almost there.

Continue for the rest of the review and more photos.

Blueberry OG from Greenfields.

Take, for example, the Blueberry OG I brought home. In the shop, the two ounces or so of the stock jar smelled like the remnants of blue shaved ice on a hot day at the flea market. But one of the nuggets I was sent home with had an unfortunate spot of mold on the tip and a slightly musty odor overall. I avoided that bud but decided to try the rest and found a truly rich Blueberry funk when I cracked open one of the flowers for packing into my clean spoon pipe. The flavor was there, too, with a berry sweetness on top of a surprisingly prominent OG earthiness. Clearly the buds could use a little TLC if I'm finding mold on them, but that aside, they seemed well grown, with a healthy dusting of trichomes.

And then there was the tasty Lee Roy Haze, despite the fact that there was little to no haze odor or flavor to the buds. Instead, it had a strong, rubbery Diesel funk that came through equally as strong in the flavor. For that reason, I'm not convinced this was Lee Roy Haze, a strain River Rock bred in-house. Instead, I think it's the more commonly available Lee Roy that Rare Dankness released last year -- and if it is the haze cross, the pheno Greenfields came up with leans much more to the OG side.

That said, I did get a haze-like rocket boost of near-immediate appetite increase with one bowl. I went from barely able to think about food to tearing apart the fridge searching for omelet ingredients in five minutes flat. Yes, the little bud pieces would have been sexier as one huge nugget, but it's worth noting that I wasn't given shake -- just really, really manicured buds with no huge sticks and stems. At $25 an eighth and $155 an ounce, I'd come back daily for "value" buds like this. Judging by the nearly empty jar compared to the full ones of other buds, I'm not the only person who felt that way.

Lee Roy Haze from Greenfields.

Concentrates weren't an option this week. Greenfields had run out by the time I visited, and the folks there weren't expecting more until the next day. But they did say they've reached an agreement for a "trim trade" with a concentrate company that should have Green Fields stocked with hash and wax selling for just $25 a gram. The shop also had some decent deals on vape pen cartridges from Colorado Concentrates and O.Pen, with pre-loaded, strain-specific oils going for $20 to $45, depending how much THC juice is inside.

As of today, Greenfields isn't going to be worth a cross-town trip; there's just not enough there. But it will be soon, especially if the crew can get future harvests dialed in. One of the women behind the counter said a new warehouse is up and running now, and nearly everything is being grown in pots of organic soil -- like the Lee Roy was.